VII
“I was born at Bucharest in 1874,” he began slowly, “and, as I think you know, I lost my father a few months after my birth. The first person who stands out in my recollection at my mother’s side, was a German, my uncle, the Baron Heldenbruck. But as I lost him when I was twelve years old, I have only a hazy recollection of him. He was, it seems, a distinguished financier. As well as his own language, he taught me arithmetic, and that by such ingenious devices that I found it prodigiously amusing. He made me what he used laughingly to call his ‘cashier’—that is, he gave into my keeping a whole fortune of petty cash, and wherever we went together, it was I who had to do the paying. Whatever he bought—and he used to buy a great deal—he insisted on my adding up the bill in as short a time as it took me to pull the notes or coins out of my pocket. Sometimes he used to puzzle me with foreign money, so that there were questions of exchange; then of discount, of interest, of brokerage and finally even of speculation. With such a training, I very soon became fairly clever at doing multiplication—and even division—sums of several figures in my head.... Don’t be alarmed” (for he saw Julius’s eyebrows beginning to frown), “it gave me no taste either for money or reckoning. For instance, if you care to know, I never keep accounts. In reality this early education of mine was merely practical and matter-of-fact. It never touched anything vital in me.... Then Heldenbruck was wonderfully understanding about the proper hygiene for children; he persuaded my mother to let me go bare-headed and bare-footed in all weathers, and to keep me out of doors as much as possible; he used even to give me a cold dip himself every day, summer and winter. I enjoyed it immensely.... But you don’t care about these details.”
“Yes, yes!”
“Then he was called away on business to America and I never saw him again.
“My mother’s salon in Bucharest was frequented by the most brilliant, and also, as far as I can judge from recollection, by the most mixed society; but her particular intimates at that time were my uncle, Prince Wladimir Bielkowski and Ardengo Baldi, whom for some reason I never called my uncle. They spent three or four years at Bucharest in the service of Russia (I was going to say Poland) and of Italy. I learnt from each of them his own language—Polish, that is, and Italian—as for Russian, I read and understand it pretty well, but I have never spoken it fluently. In the society of the kind of people who frequented my mother’s house and who made a great deal of me, not a day passed without my having occasion to practise three or four languages; and at the age of thirteen I could speak them all without any accent and with almost equal ease—and yet French preferably, because it was my father’s tongue and my mother had made a point of my learning it first.
“Bielkowski, like everyone else who wanted to please my mother, took considerable notice of me; it always seemed as though I were the person to be courted; but in his case I think it was disinterested, for he always followed his bent, however rapidly it led him and in whatever direction. He paid a great deal of attention to me even outside of anything my mother could have knowledge of, and I couldn’t help being flattered by the particular attachment he had for me. Our rather humdrum existence was transformed by this singular person, from one day to the next, into a kind of riotous holiday. No! to talk of his yielding to his bent is not enough; his bent was a wild and precipitous rush; he flung himself upon his pleasure with a kind of frenzy.
“For three summers he carried us off to a villa, or rather to a castle, on the Hungarian slope of the Carpathians, near Eperjes; we often used to drive there, but we preferred riding and my mother enjoyed nothing better than scouring the country and the forests—which were very beautiful—on horseback and in any direction our fancy led us. The pony which Wladimir gave me was the thing I loved best on earth for a whole year.
“During the second summer, Ardengo Baldi joined us; it was then that he taught me chess. Heldenbruck had broken me in to doing sums in my head and I was pretty soon able to play without looking at the chess-board.
“Baldi got on very well with Bielkowski. Of an evening, in our solitary tower, plunged in the silence of the park and the forest, we all four used to sit up till late into the night, playing game after game of cards; for though I was only a child—thirteen years old—Baldi, who hated dummy, had taught me how to play whist—and how to cheat.
“Juggler, conjurer, mountebank, acrobat, he began to frequent us just at the time when my imagination was emerging from the long fast to which it had been subjected by Heldenbruck. I was hungry for marvels—credulous—of a green and eager curiosity. Later on, Baldi explained his tricks to me, but no familiarity could abolish that first sensation of mystery when, the first evening, I saw him light his cigarette at his little finger-nail, and then, as he had been losing at cards, draw out of my ears and my nose as many roubles as he wanted—which absolutely terrified me, but greatly entertained the company, for he kept saying, still with the same perfect coolness: ‘Fortunately this boy here is an inexhaustible mine!’
“On the evenings when he was alone with my mother and me, he was for ever inventing some new game, some surprise, some absurd joke or other; he mimicked all our acquaintance, pulled faces, made himself unrecognisable, imitated all sorts of voices, the cries of animals, the sounds of instruments, produced extraordinary noises from Heaven knows where, sang to the accompaniment of the guzla, danced, pranced, walked on his hands, jumped over the tables and chairs, juggled with his bare feet like a Japanese, twirling the drawing-room screen or the small tea-table on the tip of his big toe; he juggled with his hands still better; at his bidding, a torn and crumpled piece of paper would burst forth into a swarm of white butterflies, which I would blow this way and that, and which the fluttering of his fan would keep hovering in the air. In his neighbourhood, objects lost their weight and reality—their presence even—or else took on some fresh, queer, unexpected significance, totally remote from all utility. ‘There are very few things it isn’t amusing to juggle with,’ he used to say. And with it all he was so funny that I used to grow faint with laughing, and my mother would cry out: ‘Stop, Baldi! Cadio will never be able to sleep.’ And, indeed, my nerves must have been pretty solid to hold out against such excitements.
“I benefited greatly by this teaching; at the end of a few months I could have given points to Baldi himself in more than one of his tricks, and even....”
“It is clear, my dear boy, that you were given a most careful education,” interrupted Julius at this moment.
Lafcadio burst out laughing at the novelist’s horrified countenance. “Oh! none of it sank very deep; don’t be alarmed. But it was high time Uncle Faby appeared on the scene, wasn’t it? It was he who became intimate with my mother when Bielkowski and Baldi were called away to other posts.”
“Faby? Was it his writing I saw on the first page of your pocket-book?”
“Yes. Fabian Taylor, Lord Gravensdale. He took my mother and me to a villa he had rented near Duino on the Adriatic, where my health and strength greatly improved. The coast at that place forms a rocky peninsula which was entirely occupied by the grounds of the villa. There I ran wild, spending the whole day long under the pines, among the rocks and creeks, or swimming or canoeing in the sea. The photograph you saw belongs to that time. I burnt that too.”
“It seems to me,” said Julius, “that you might have made yourself a little more respectable for the occasion.”
“That’s exactly what I couldn’t have done,” answered Lafcadio, laughing. “Faby, under pretence of wanting me to get bronzed, kept all my wardrobe under lock and key—even my linen....”
“And what did your mother say?”
“She was very much entertained; she said if her guests were shocked they might go; but as a matter of fact it didn’t prevent any single one of our visitors from remaining.”
“And during all this time, my poor boy, your education ...!”
“Yes, I was so quick at learning that my mother rather neglected it; it was not till I was sixteen that she seemed suddenly to become aware of the fact, and after a marvellous journey in Algeria, which I took with Uncle Faby (I think it was the best time of my life), I was sent to Paris and put in charge of a thick-skinned brute of a jailer, who looked after my schooling.”
“After such excessive liberty, I readily understand that constraint of that kind must have seemed rather hard to you.”
“I should never have borne it without Protos. He was a boarder at the same school as I—in order to learn French, it was said; but he spoke it to perfection and I could never make out the point of his being there—nor of my being there either. I was sick of the whole thing—pining away. I hadn’t exactly any feeling of friendship for Protos, but I turned towards him as though I expected him to save me. He was a good deal older than I was and looked even older than he was, without a trace of childhood left in his bearing or tastes. His features were extraordinarily illuminating when he chose, and could express anything and everything; but when he was at rest he used to look like an idiot. One day when I chaffed him about it, he replied that the important thing in this world was never to look like what one was. He was not content merely with being thought humble—he wanted to be thought stupid. It amused him to say that what is fatal to most people is that they prefer parade to drill and won’t hide their talents; but he didn’t say it to anybody but me. He kept himself aloof from everyone—even from me, though I was the only person in the school he didn’t despise. When once I succeeded in getting him to talk he became extraordinarily eloquent, but most of the time he was taciturn and seemed to be brooding over some dark design, which I should have liked to know about. When I asked him—politely, for no one ever treated him with familiarity—what he was doing in such a place, he answered: ‘I am getting under way.’ He had a theory that in life one could get out of the worst holes by saying to oneself: ‘What’s the odds!’ That’s what I repeated to myself so often that I ran away.
“I started with eighteen francs in my pocket and reached Baden by short stages, eating anything, sleeping anywhere. I was rather done up when I arrived, but, on the whole, pleased with myself, for I still had three francs left; it is true that I picked up five or six by the way. I found my mother there with my uncle de Gesvres, who was delighted with my escapade, and made up his mind to take me back to Paris; he was inconsolable, he said, that I should have unpleasant recollections of Paris. And it’s a fact that when I went back there with him, Paris made a much more favourable impression on me.
“The Marquis de Gesvres took a positively frenzied pleasure in spending money; it was a perpetual need—a craving; it seemed as though he were grateful to me for helping him to satisfy it—for increasing his appetite by the addition of my own. It was he who taught me (the contrary of Faby) to like dress. I think I wore my clothes well; he was a good master; his elegance was perfectly natural—like a second sincerity. I got on with him very well. We spent whole mornings together at the shirtmaker’s, the shoemaker’s, the tailor’s; he paid particular attention to shoes, saying that you could tell a man as certainly by his shoes as by the rest of his dress and by his features—and more secretly.... He taught me to spend money without keeping accounts and without taking thought beforehand as to whether I should have enough to satisfy my fancy, my desire or my hunger. He laid it down as a principle that of these three it was always hunger that should be satisfied last, for (I remember his words) the appeal of fancy or desire is fugitive, while hunger is certain to return and only becomes more imperative the longer it has to wait. He taught me, too, not to enjoy a thing more because it had cost a great deal, nor less if, by chance, it cost nothing at all.
“It was at this point that I lost my mother. A telegram called me suddenly back to Bucharest; I arrived in time only to see her dead. There I learnt that after the Marquis’s departure she had run so deeply into debt that she had left no more than just enough to clear her estate, so that there was no expectation for me of a single copeck, or a single pfennig or a single groschen. Directly after the funeral I returned to Paris, where I thought I should find my uncle de Gesvres; but he had unexpectedly left for Russia without leaving an address.
“There is no need to tell you my reflections. True, I had certain accomplishments in my outfit by means of which one can always manage to pull through; but the more I was in need of them, the more repugnant I felt to making use of them. Fortunately one night as I was walking the pavement rather at a loose end, I came across Proto’s ex-mistress—the Carola Venitequa you saw yesterday—who gave me a decent house-room. A few days later I received a rather mysterious communication to say that a scanty allowance would be paid me on the first of every month at a certain solicitor’s; I have a horror of getting to the bottom of things and I drew it without further enquiries. Then you came along ... and now you know more or less everything I felt inclined to tell you.”
“It is fortunate,” said Julius solemnly, “it is fortunate, Lafcadio, that a little money is coming your way; with no profession, with no education, condemned to live by expedients ... now that I know you, and such as I take you for, you were ready for anything.”
“On the contrary, ready for nothing,” replied Lafcadio, looking at Julius gravely. “In spite of all I have told you, I see that you don’t know me. Nothing hinders me so effectually as want. I have never yet been tempted but by the things that could be of no service to me.”
“Paradoxes, for instance. And is that what you call nourishing?”
“It depends on the stomach. You choose to give the name of paradox to what yours refuses. As for me, I should let myself die of hunger if I had nothing before me but such a hash of bare bones as the logic you feed your characters on.”
“Allow me....”
“The hero of your last book, at any rate. Is it true that it’s a portrait of your father? The pains you take to keep him always and everywhere consistent with you and with himself—faithful to his duties and his principles—to your theories, that is—you can imagine how it strikes a person like me!... Monsieur de Baraglioul, you may take my word for it—I am a creature of inconsequence. And look, how much I have been talking! when only yesterday I considered myself the most silent, the most secretive, the most retired of beings. But it was a good thing that we should become acquainted without delay—there will be no need to go over the ground again. To-morrow—this evening I shall withdraw again into my privacy.”
The novelist, completely thrown off his centre by these remarks, made an effort to recover himself.
“In the first place you may rest assured that there is no such thing as inconsequence—in psychology any more than in physics,” he began. “You are a being in process of formation and....”
Repeated knocks at the door interrupted him. But as no one appeared, it was Julius who left the room. A confused noise of voices reached Lafcadio through the open door. Then there was a long silence. Lafcadio, after waiting for ten minutes, was preparing to go, when a servant in livery came in to him:
“Monsieur le Comte says that he won’t ask you to wait any longer, Sir. He has just had bad news of his father and hopes you will kindly excuse him.”
From the tone in which this was said, Lafcadio guessed that the old Count was dead. He mastered his emotion.
“Courage!” said he to himself as he returned homewards. “The moment has come. It is time to launch the ship.[C] From whatever quarter the wind blows now it will be the right one. Since I cannot live really near the old man, I might as well prepare to leave him altogether.”
As he passed by the hotel porter’s lodge, he gave him the small box which he had been carrying about with him ever since the day before.
“Please give this parcel to Mlle. Venitequa when she comes in this evening, and kindly prepare my bill.”
An hour later his box was packed and he sent for a cab. He went off without leaving an address. His solicitor’s was enough.